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Madinat al-Muslimeen Islamic Message Board
| Nothing new in Bush's speech |
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| Sumaiya |
| 03/07/03 at 00:55:31 |
| [url]http://www.complete911timeline.org/main/essayksmcapture.html[/url] Nothing new in Bush speech. Despite the intense build-up by the media, there is nothing new of any substance in Bush's speech. It's a rehash of the same things Bush has been saying for months now, that the US "knows" Saddam has weapons of mass destruction and Saddam cannot prove he doesn't, therefore the invasion is on. Bush is going on about how the Iraqi people are suffering under their present government. Considering the manner in which the US is currently treating Muslims, Bush has no room to pass judgment on any other nation. and does the name "Waco" ring a bell? Bush has declared that Hans Blix has to answer the question of whether Iraq has disarmed. Bush is demanding a "yes" or "no". Apparently, he will not accept an answer that "We cannot know until we finish inspecting". Bush's replies to the reporter's questions are not even answers. The Reporter from Bloomberg asked why, if all the other nations in the UN had the same intelligence information that the US claims justifies viewing Iraq as such a dire threat that immediate military action is justified, then why don't those other nations agree with the US course of action? This is a valid question, and deserves an answer, but Bush just rambled back to "Saddam has weapons of mass destruction", and what a threat Saddam is without actually addressing the reporter's question. In fact, Bush is sounding like a stuck record, simply repeating the same "jingoisms" over and over in place of real answers to real questions. Bush looks like he is losing it, stammering, stuttering, jumping from one catch-phrase to the next with no clear progression of thought. P.S. Mr. Bush, those other nations do not hate us because we are free, especially since the Patriot Act has ended that freedom and turned us into a surveillance state. Those other nations hate the US because the US keeps interfering in other people's countries. Want to know why Arabs do not like the US Government? How about billions in dollars in weapons to Israel that Israel in turn uses to murder Arabs? The courts in the United States are trying to blame the manufacturers of guns for the crimes committed with them. Under that precedent, set by the US Government itself, Arabs have every right to blame Americans for the murders committed by Israel using US supplied weapons. Those people who hate us do not hate us because we are free, they hate us because they had to grow up watching their friends and relatives blown to pieces and finding "Made in the USA" stamped on the shrapnel. That is a valid and reasonable hate. You claim to hate Saddam because he tried to kill your father. Why is it inappropriate for Arabs to hate you for all the fathers, sons, daughters, wives, and children killed with weapons the US supplied? Is anguish reserved only to white people, Mr. Bush? Are Arabs not supposed to be angry when US-made weapons kill people they know and love? Are they just supposed to sit quietly amid the carnage because whatever god you whisper to at night tells you that those Arabs aren't really human and are therefore not supposed to be angry at what is happening to them? Indeed that it is the height of pretension that they feel anything at all about their murdered loved ones. They are not supposed to care, therefore if they hate the US, it is only because we are free, right Mr. Bush? P.P.S. It's "nuclear", not "nookular". P.P.P.S. You are the worst President in this nation's history. |
| Re: Nothing new in Bush's speech |
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| Maliha |
| 03/07/03 at 08:32:51 |
| [slm] Subhana Allah, did anyone watch that speech? Not that I expected anything more, but that man has nothing to say! If I heard the repitition of "Saddam has weapons of mass destructions" one more time, in his monotone, boring, voice I would have screamed! Did anyone notice his gestures? My cousin remarked "Does he think he is on a hollywood movie?!" That man, tried to put up a charade...with full hollywood effects...of a somber character being propelled to war because its really up to Saddam whether we go to war or not...yeah right! I wanted to throw up! Why didn't the journalists challenge him? The questions posed were so simplistic...nothing questioning the past, the ongoing sanctions, and the death of the many millions on the hands of Bush himself, what about the OIL. Every question brought back the same answer..."Saddam has weapons of Mass destruction"...no evidence..no remose. I didn't expect sincerity, but I didn't expect to be treated like an idiot either! "They hate us because of our freedom???!!!" PUHLEASE!!!!! The saddest thing about it, is that people listen to that and actually believe it! I just had a discussion with someone at work who sounded like a miniture Bush..."You know, those people really hate our way of life, and like..our liberty and stuff"...this lady, has a fiancee who is a marine, currently stationed in Kuwait! When I asked her if she cares that he may die innocently in the war, she states "He would have died carrying out his duty, defending our freedom". I felt such a sense of defeat. If this is what the average person believes, what stops the powers to be from doing anything they want with the sacred lives of millions of people? My cousin remarked that we are going to be questioned on the Day of Judgement. What did we do? We are witnesses to the ongoing saga of bloody mayhem, what are we doing? *Seriously I'll start a thread in the Bebzi about what different communities are doing..so we can either coordinate efforts or learn from each other* The whole time I was listening to Bush, the ayahs from Surah Yaseen were running through my head: 036.008 We have put yokes round their necks right up to their chins, so that their heads are forced up (and they cannot see). 036.009 And We have put a bar in front of them and a bar behind them, and further, We have covered them up; so that they cannot see. 036.010 The same is it to them whether thou admonish them or thou do not admonish them: they will not believe. They may have the might and cowardice to hide behind all the rhetoric..but Allah is the Mightiest and will abase them Inshaallah in this dunya and Akhera. Sis, Maliha :'( [wlm] |
| Bush's Wake-Up Call Was a Snooze Alarm |
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| Maliha |
| 03/07/03 at 10:09:25 |
| [i] [slm] This man eloquently analyzes Bush's speech last night...Certainly more calmly than I did :p [/i] Bush's Wake-Up Call Was a Snooze Alarm By Tom Shales Friday, March 7, 2003; Page C01 George W. Bush kept seeming to lose interest in his own remarks last night as the president did that rarest of rare things -- for him -- and held a prime-time news conference. Televised live on all the major networks from the East Room of the White House, the occasion found Bush declaring this to be "an important moment" for America and the world, yet he spoke with little urgency and no perceptible passion. Have ever a people been led more listlessly into war? It's tempting to speculate how history would have changed if Winston Churchill or FDR had been as lethargic as Bush about rallying their nations in an hour of crisis. There were times when it appeared his train of thought had jumped the tracks. Occasionally he would stare blankly into space during lengthy pauses between statements -- pauses that once or twice threatened to be endless. There were times when it seemed every sentence Bush spoke was of the same duration and delivered in the same dour monotone, giving his comments a numbing, soporific aura. Watching him was like counting sheep. Network commentators by and large tippy-toed around the subject of Bush's curiously subdued performance. But at least Terry Moran of ABC News dared to say that the White House press corps had definitely seen Bush "sharper" than he was last night. Tactfully and gingerly, Moran said Bush seemed to be "trying to keep his mannerisms as cool as possible" as he fielded questions and spoke of ultimatums. The lethargy was contagious; correspondents were almost as logy as Bush was. Nobody even bothered to ask a question about Osama bin Laden, whose capture was rumored to be imminent yesterday and is still in the public mind a more reprehensible monster than Saddam Hussein. Bush popped the balloon that bin Laden had been found when he failed to make a dramatic opening statement, instead reiterating for the umpteenth time some of his many charges against Hussein, whose token efforts at disarmament amounted to "a willful charade," Bush said. In one of his more effective moments, Bush said that the tragedy of 9/11 showed what terrorists can do with only four airplanes and so we should imagine what Saddam Hussein could do with his notorious weapons of mass destruction. But there were few effective moments. At times during the hour, Bush almost appeared to be backing off the previously immutable notion that Hussein's intransigence makes war virtually inevitable. "We don't have to go to war," he said at one point. "I'm hopeful that he does disarm," Bush said of Hussein. "It may require force" to get him to do it, but "I hope it can be done peacefully," he said in separate remarks. While at another point he seemed to say, contrary to previous statements, that he was "optimistic" about "diplomacy" doing the job so that U.S. troops won't have to, he also said, with respect to disarming Hussein: "Diplomacy hasn't worked. We've tried diplomacy for 12 years." He also said the "use of force" remains "my last choice" as a means to disarm the Iraqi leader. "I recognize there are people who don't like war. I don't like war," Bush said. But as in the past, he referred to Hussein at various points as a cancer, a murderer, a master of deception and just generally an inhuman fiend who must be destroyed or exiled. The statements did not come across as particularly cogent or consistent. Then again, perhaps Bush was just offering a summary of everything that's been said on the issue over the past few months. The contrast between the foggy Bush of last night and the gung-ho Bush who delivered a persuasive State of the Union message to Congress not so long ago was considerable. Maybe Bush thought he was, indeed, coming across as cool and temperate instead of bored and enervated, and this was simply a rhetorical miscalculation. On the other hand, it hardly seems out of order to speculate that, given the particularly heavy burden of being president in this new age of terrorism -- a time in which America has, as Bush said, become a "battlefield" -- the president may have been ever so slightly medicated. He would hardly be the first president ever to take a pill. There were brief interludes during the news conference -- especially the long languid pauses -- when some viewers might have flashed back to the presidency of Richard Nixon. That is, the Nixon Years at their most tumultuous and Twilight Zoney, when the old Trickster would come on TV and you'd sit there not just fascinated but a trifle terrified of what he might say, who he'd accuse of persecuting him, and whether he might come completely unglued or just melt into a hideous puddle right before your horrified eyes. Obviously Bush was not likely to inspire anything approaching that kind of fear last night, even in the most paranoid of viewers. But by his tone and his demeanor, he certainly didn't inspire a great burst of hopeful confidence, either. It was as if he didn't quite realize he was on national television and being watched closely by millions of people who were hanging on his every word and on his every expression and gesture, too. And that we might be a nation at war in a matter of days. Or . . . might we? © 2003 The Washington Post Company |
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